Online rating system Avvo puts attorneys in the hot seat

Company says it's the first such site that has consumers in mind

JOHN COO, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

By JOHN COOK, P-I REPORTER

Updated 10:00 pm, Monday, June 4, 2007

Avvo Chief Executive Mark Britton, foreground, and Paul Bloom, vice president of products and marketing, hang out, literally, at their Seattle offices Monday, a day before unveiling their online rating system for attorneys.
Photo: Andy Rogers/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Picking the right attorney can be a daunting task, especially for those not accustomed to dealing with the law.

But a heavily funded Seattle startup by the name of Avvo hopes it can help consumers navigate the legal maze and choose the best attorney for the job.

After 16 months of secrecy, Avvo is unveiling Tuesday an online rating system that ranks thousands of attorneys in more than 110 practice areas based on their experience, education, disciplinary actions and dozens of other factors. The company is launching avvo.com in 10 states, including Washington and California, with Chief Executive Mark Britton hopeful that it will expand nationally by the end of the year.

"This concept of choosing the right lawyer ... is a decision that can impact your entire life in some instances," Britton said. "But consumers have no idea how to go about it."

A number of online legal directories already exist: Martindale-Hubbell, FindLaw and AttorneyPages, to name a few. State bar associations also provide lawyer directories, in some cases pointing out disciplinary actions.

But Britton says there is "no established brand" that attacks the problem on behalf of the consumer. And the 40-year-old former attorney at Preston, Gates & Ellis notes that Avvo is different because it uses a mathematical model -- pulling information from attorneys' Web sites, state bar associations and other public databases -- to determine which attorney is the best in his or her practice area.

Avvo, which also allows consumers and other lawyers to provide feedback on attorneys' performances, attaches a ranking on a scale from one (extreme caution) to 10 (superb). Attorneys also are permitted to update their profile pages, though they cannot alter Avvo's rating or eliminate public record information.

Not everyone likes the idea, especially those lawyers who score poorly. Told that his 3.7 rating on Avvo advises potential clients to proceed with "caution," Seattle criminal defense attorney John Henry Browne was not impressed.

"This whole thing is a joke," he said.

Browne -- who has practiced law for 35 years and taught at the University of Washington -- said that he has among the highest rankings in peer review publications, such as Martindale-Hubbell and Best Lawyers in America. The low score on Avvo is tied in part to an admonition that he received from the state bar in 2005 related to compensation issues, something that Browne said is incorrectly listed on Avvo and in state records as a disciplinary action.

"That tells me they don't know what they are doing," said Browne, adding that he will pursue the matter.

Britton is sticking by the rating, saying that Browne's beef should be "with the public records of the state of Washington rather than Avvo."

In many respects, Avvo is following in the footsteps of another controversial Seattle business: the online home valuation service Zillow.com. In fact, Britton has deep ties to Zillow Chief Executive Rich Barton, who sits on Avvo's board and has played an integral role in the development of the new service. The two Internet executives previously worked together at Expedia, where Britton served as general counsel and Barton as chief executive.

And the two entrepreneurs (who both took sabbaticals in Italy after leaving Expedia) also share the same venture backer in Benchmark Capital. The Silicon Valley firm, along with Bellevue-based Ignition Partners, pumped $10 million into Avvo in April.

Britton welcomes comparisons to Zillow, even though many homeowners and real estate professionals have complained about the accuracy of its valuations. Like Zillow, Avvo is free to consumers and plans to make money through targeted online advertisements.

FreeAdvice Chief Executive Gerry Goldsholle, who operates the online directory AttorneyPages, has "toyed around" with the concept of a rating system. But the 12-year-old Sausalito, Calif., company never pursued the idea because of the problem with "phony ratings" and the inherent challenges of having consumers offering feedback on something they don't really understand, Goldsholle said.

"The average person does not, to his or her great fortune, have to deal with lawyers every day. So the experience is unusual," Goldsholle said in an April interview. "It is like the patient grading the surgeon. It is very hard to tell individually if the surgeon has done the best job or not."

Britton said that client reviews are just "one leg" of the Avvo stool, whose ratings also are generated through peer reviews and information compiled from attorneys' Web sites and other sources.

Still, because Avvo attempts to affix a rating to every lawyer -- just as Zillow attempts to place a value on every home -- it is bound to generate controversy.

Britton realizes that some may object to poor ratings, but he said the same criteria are used to rank every attorney.

"There are some lawyers that have disciplinary sanctions or what have you that aren't going to like having that dirty laundry being aired, but the fact is it is something that consumers should have a right to know," Britton said. "We have shown this to a lot of lawyers, and the good ones, they love it. And I do think that some of the bad apples, who I argue are spoiling the whole bunch, are going to have some difficulty with what we are doing."

Still, some Seattle attorneys who scored well doubted whether the Avvo rankings could really be trusted.

Michael Jacobs, who specializes in auto, workplace and pedestrian accidents, received an Avvo ranking of 7.0, or "very good." But Jacobs, who has more than 35 years of legal experience, wondered how Avvo derived the score.

"If they are going to start out with rankings from the get-go, my concern would be that they don't have sufficient information to arrive at a valid determination," he said. "Any type of system will only be as good as the input and that is where I have some concerns."

That issue was also on the mind of Martin Fox, 59, a Seattle attorney who specializes in motorcycle accidents. Fox scored an overall 6.5 rating on Avvo, a score that didn't really mean much to him. "Where does it come from?" he asked.

At this time, Fox's profile page on Avvo includes only a tidbit of information about his 33 years of legal experience. Still, Fox -- who does not have a Web site but advertises in the yellow pages -- said he would possibly take a closer look at adding to the profile as a possible marketing tool.

"I would want to know more, and then when I knew more I would have to determine whether or not one would want to devote the time and energy to building up the Web page," he said. "If I were a beginning lawyer, I would be more interested in the site than somebody who has been practicing for 30 years."

In order to guard against inaccurate or libelous information being posted about individual attorneys, Britton said that comments from clients -- who can post anonymously -- are moderated.

"An actual person will go in and read the review and make sure that nothing looks fishy," he said.

In the case of attorneys, only those who have signed up with Avvo and provided credit card information can post a comment about another attorney. Lawyers also can report inaccurate information and request that it is removed from the site.

But a key question remains.

Can a mathematical model -- which relies in part on the input of clients and attorneys -- really determine the best and worst lawyers?

Several prominent lawyers in the Seattle area scored midrange to high rankings on Avvo.

Former Gov. Gary Locke, now an attorney at Davis Wright Tremaine, scored a 7.1 ranking, while John McKay, a former U.S. attorney and now Getty Images general counsel, scored 6.5. Steve Berman, who has won several major class-action lawsuits over the years, received a "superb" rating with a score of 9.1

William Neukom, president-elect of the American Bar Association and former vice president of legal affairs at Microsoft, appears in two profiles with scores of 6.5 and 7.4 (Neukom is licensed in California and Washington).

Britton -- who comes from a family of lawyers and boasts an Avvo score of 8.0, or "excellent" -- said he has been "pleasantly surprised" with the accuracy of the rating system. "When I look at the statistical curves that we have and all of the true mathematical ways of looking at this, and also when I just smoke-test this and look at different lawyers that I know, I just say: 'Wow, this works really well.' "